Lukashenko is showing he's willing to go to great lengths to silence opposition and free press completely in Belarus. Arresting opposition party leaders before elections for made-up accusations is par for the course in Belarus... but now he has been doing the same not only to his enemies, but to any newsagency that dares to as much as hint at criticizing his brutal regime, as he's just done with tut.by[1], the now former largest independent news portal in the country.
The EU has shown no determination to put a brake on Lukashenko's abuses and has been completely passive so far on the matter.
The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies will not be tolerated. Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships, and letting Belarus get away with this international provocation will just make it even more clear that the great powers don't care enough to defend democratic rights anywhere outside their own borders, and they are free to go ahead with their own crackdowns on freedom of expression and disregard of human rights.
Almost all. I can really think of two counterexamples, Japan and Korea (and it took a very long time ~30 years? for korea to figure itself out). Maybe Jugoslavia can be put into that bin too, though it's not clear if the US intervention hurt or helped.
I have to preface this with a very emphatic the ends absolutely do not justify the means, but, defying ill repute and near-unanimous pessimism, Iraq seems to have been able to slowly stitch its parliamentary system back together and respond to democratic pressures (protests, elections) without resorting to fraud and violence. It's too early to celebrate, but things look a lot better than they did ten years ago.
Setting up the Weimar Republic after WW1 didn't go so well, then the aftermath of WW2 there were decades of east+west Germany. I don't see that as a positive example of a foreign power setting up a government.
The Weimar Republic wasn't set up by the Entente and not going to war with the Soviet Union to liberate East Germany was, to put it mildly, a reasonable decision.
> The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy unless there's a geopolitical advantage to be had by leveraging it.
Who are the countries who are willing to intercede militarily purely to liberate a country?
> From a practical standpoint, US interventions almost always make things worse for the people who live there, and in a lot of cases less democratic.
I think this is a fair criticism—intercession is hard—but the question isn’t whether things are better or worse than they were, but rather whether they were better or worse than they would have been under Soviet influence. And you can analyze this as “whether or not a specific country is better or worse” as well as “whether or not the world is better or worse for the diminished soviet influence that would have been afforded by that country falling under Soviet influence”.
in Afghanistan for how long? now Taliban control more territory then they did before US came in...
Libya? way way worse, i mean its a place you can buy slaves in open markets now after US intervention...
list is huge, some places they would take out democracy to put in puppet dictatorships all in the interest of the US, they will work with Saudi Arabia and in last 5 years starve 80,000 kids to death in Yemen under 5 years.
i can only list a few countries that US intervention ended actually helping both the US and the country.
so yes USA will claim to come in to give "democracy" or what ever humanitarian excuse but its never for those reasons, its always for the interest of US and US corporations, i mean didn't the US take a country just because corporations wanted it for growing Bananas? and still to this day they are messing with them ?
I don't know how you got any of that from my comment. I'm quite explicitly not arguing in favor of interventionism, nor am I arguing that Soviets were evil. I'm making a metaargument that criticisms of US interventionism must compare US interventionism with Soviet interventionism; it's insufficient to say that US interventionism is worse than no interventionism because the latter wasn't a plausible option. So yeah, it's a shitty argument for interventionism because it's not an argument for interventionism. ;)
Soviet influence it is. Lukasenko was a party boss in USSR
Putin was KGB mafia boy.
Kravcuk, and Kucma were party bosses of state enterprises.
Aliyevs were KGB men
Shevardnaze was USSR's foreign minister
The whole of Central Asia is basically ruled by exactly the same Moscow's satraps since late eighties, with exception of wild tempered Kyrgyzstan.
Mongolia, "the 16th republic," also had communist comeback, only ended by an extreme, Norko style economic collapse.
The only country of ex-USSR where CPSU did not recapture the power outside of Baltics was Armenia, but only thanks to power going to their nazis. A medicine worse than the poison.
Which ended in 2003. I'd argue that CPSU, since 1991, has had much less internal influence in Georgia than Armenia, which is still heavily Russian-aligned. Georgia is trying to join NATO...
The US only intervenes if a rich American has a profit motive that benefits them. Standing up for the Bosnians was the last rare instance where this wasn't the case. Selling bombs to both sides to maintain perpetual conflict is the usual favorite play.
The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex. I think, for example, it's hard to argue that there was a profit motive in somalia, or bombing that pharmaceuticals factory in the sudan, going back further and getting out of africa, Grenada, e.g. Not that these interventions weren't stupid for other reasons.
Thats not what happened. There was no piracy problem. Then the US toppled the government. Then there was a piracy problem. The US didnt intervene to stop a problem that didnt exist. I was responding to the claim that destabilizing the Somali government in 1993 was profitable to wealth Americans because shipping lanes are near Somalia.
>After the collapse of the Somali government and the dispersal of the Somali Navy, ... groups, using small boats, would sometimes hold vessels and crew for ransom. This grew into a lucrative trade, with large ransom payments. The pirates then began hijacking commercial vessels
Thanks for the insight, I really wasn't aware of the extent of their actions.
The quote I posted is a bit cryptic by itself. What I meant by it was that perhaps the US had plans that would lead to greater benefits for them in the region, but these plans backfired by inadvertently creating the Somali piracy problem.
They did everything right with regards to whatever they were hoping to achieve, but they still failed and then pirates happened.
The US is no stranger to strategic military intervention that costs lives and money and achieves nothing very substantial - from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.
Speaking of which - what was the profit motive in Vietnam? There was definitely geopolitical motive, but I can't imagine there was a "rich American" person or corporation calling the shots for themselves in indochina
> The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex.
It was the cold war. I'm pretty sure the MIC could have justified so much spending in other ways besides vietnam, but we are venturing into counterfactual territory.
Right, US stood up for Bosnians for the goodness of their hearts, not to weaken Serbs, historically Russian allies, and to signal
Turkey and middle eastern oil holders "we support your foothold in Europe".
US bombs landed on Croatian Serbs on multiple occasions thus enabling ethnic cleansing. But no biggie, what's small ethnic cleansing between NATO friends?
> The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy
A Mig fighter jet was dispatched to shepherd the airliner. This represents a threat to anyone on a flight through or maybe even near Belarus's airspace.
Putin's ambitions seem like a geopolitical risk. Maybe on both sides; it seems Autocrats right now like a good 'buffer' - e.g. North Korea. Plus a new forming 'axis' vs 'democracy' power struggle
Hard to argue with the second when looking at the past 2 decades, but looking broader in the past century I think there are many more arguments the other way. Most of Europe for one.
This is clearly the wrong question to ask if you want to determine whether interventions were merited. You need to ask: is it likely the situation would have been worse... or better had whatever specific intervention not taken place, and you need to include positive and negative consequences to at the very least the wider region, if not the entire globe.
After all, you don't blame a nurse for all their dying patients if their specialty is palliative care; the counterfactual matters.
South Korea became democratic after a revolution against the US-installed government. But even then, it's an incredibly weak democracy - every single South Korean prime minister resigned in disgrace, without any exception, after some kind of illegal action or corruption (!!!).
Japan at the national level is barely democratic, the LDP has won all but one time at the national level in 50+years, and the term in which they weren't power they installed party-loyal functionaries to almost ignore the democratically elected government. A few times they did have premiers from other parties for a brief amount of time, but they never completed a term because they went against the LDP.
In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization and it's leadership is thus being targeted 24/7 and prosecuted for anything remotely possible such as putting flyers in mailboxes, in order to disrupt the political process.
If it's a democracy, it's one of the weakest ones.
Why LDP is still strong even though it sucks (but I don't say there are any other good party) is due to single-seat constituency system that aims two-party system learned from USA. Thanks USA!
The system is now proven completely failed, but who can change the law is who benefited from the law.
> In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization
You may refer 調査対象団体 but I can't find the 10% criteria. JCP is the only national party listed on the list for historical reason. I never heard that JCP member had prosecuted by posting mails. Other organizations are really worth to be surveilled. I don't think this is why democracy in Japan is not good.
The GOP wants to check IDs because their voters are more likely to have ID. That’s the only reason. It’s not some noble effort to protect the sanctity of our elections. Illegal immigrants don’t vote.
Kuwait 1990
Haiti 1994
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995
Kosovo 1999
Colombia 2000+
Afghanistan 2001
Libya 2011
Iraq 2014
There have been a lot of catastrophic $&@$ ups and terrible ideas, but it's selective history to claim there have been no positive outcomes for the people who live there.
You've got this exactly backwards. The invasion of Iraq was a contingent factor in the rise of ISIL. In particular Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi regular army was incredibly stupid. The bulk of the regular army, not the republican guard, acted more as a nation wide police force than a military proper. Disbanding them meant there were now 100,000's of thousands of young men with basic military training with no more income to provide to their family. That became the recruiting pool for both the insurgency and ISIL.
I see no reason to limit discussion of the consequence of what we did in Iraq to 2014, but even then, it's not nearly as positive as what you're claiming. Iraq post 2014 is now effectively a client state of Iran, something that makes life much more dangerous for broad swaths of ordinary Iraqi citizens, as well as the region in general.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue your intervention in my house fire was successful because you used your bulldozer to clean up the rubble, if you were the arsonist that set fire to it in the first place.
If you'd like a particularly poignant "fly on the wall" style look into how ordinary Iraqi people saw the invasion in 2003, and their predictions for the future, check out Iraq in Fragments. Many of their predictions have come true in the years since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4
So, what do you think the international community should have done in 2014? Or are you advocating for non-intervention in what was unfolding at that point?
Just because a previous intervention was ill advised does not mean a later one was; quite the opposite; you could even consider it taking responsibility for damage caused.
It's clearly not disingenuous to include the 2014 intervention in the list of the more reasonable ones.
I mean, if you present it as somehow excusing the earlier mistake; that'd be a different issue.
The US is not the world police.
Maybe should start with their ally Saudi Arabia first to dispel any doubts, it was not about democracy. Raif Badawi is still imprisoned.
>The US and Saudis both have a very large gun to each other's heads
Thats just not true. Saudi family rule over Arabia is predicated on US support. If all SA oil production stopped it would not topple the US government. If the US decided to back a political opposition like it did in Syria the Saudi regime would implode in days.
Saud family have a lot in the bank, so they could hire someone else if USA politics got rid of their lobbyists who control much of Congress. Are they so weak that they would simply collapse without USA support? I would think they could just hire e.g. some ex-Pakistani military to keep the populace cowed.
Or do you mean to say that USA could easily replace the regime with a different, more-favored one? How did that work in Syria? We're withdrawing from Afghanistan now, and at this time Taliban control more territory than they held in 2001. USA military is a bit of a paper tiger, when it comes to achieving results via military action.
It is not normal to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations unless one of the affected nations requests help. And even then the other nations have a lot of additional considerations beyond doing anything but making a sternly worded speech. Most of the time when the USA inserts itself into other affairs people complain about the USA being a bully and sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. The EU needs to craft a strong response to this by itself or lose a lot of credibility on the world stage.
Edit: just to clarify, some of the USA’s other considerations would be the risk of getting called out for being a hypocrite- it has done a few shady extraditions in the past.
So true. Both Greece and Lithuania are EU members. Part of the EU mission is to provide freedom & security for the members. So here we are, do something.
I suspect the U.S. is already responsible for making this behaviour more common. Can certainly try to make up for it, but I think great damage has been done.
You dont make up for being a brutal expansionist empire by being a "kinder gentler" expansionist empire. Until there is regime change in the US nothing it does will be good for anyone but its own ruling class.
Can you imagine the pressure he is under, knowing full well that Russia stands ready to take the entire country if the possibility of a Pro Europe/Pro Western Party was elected. You don't have to look back too far to see what lies on the horizon, Ukraine was a perfect example of that. Unfortunately Europe (France and Germany mainly)/West (USA) has shown that they are more interested in maintaining a business relationship with Russia than defended against their aggression. They won't even support none aggression treaties they were all a party to.
Is Lukashenko a dictator, for sure, but he is in an impossible situation. The Russians are making sure of that and as long as Western Governments show an indifference to the sovereignty of countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc there is no way forward.
He is in impossible situation not because of Russia, but because of corrupt and violent regime he created. Majority of population in Belarus is pro-Russian, so the alliance between countries would persist after the transition of power (see Armenia, Kyrgyzstan for recent examples of how this works). His personal risks are loss of all assets and the fact that the new government will likely demand his extradition from Russia for criminal investigation. Probably the only reason why Lukashenko is still there is that Russia will not revoke its support until there are signs that opposition wins.
> The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies
The USA showed leadership when it contrived a situation where the president of Bolivia's plane was made to land in Austria, to search for someone who leaked to journalists that the US government was monitoring virtually all domestic phone calls, texts, Internet connections etc.
Leadership in an affront against democracy, as you put it.
It's sad that USA has been seen as the international beacon for freedom and the defender of democracy for so many international struggles but USA has abdicated this role after it was abused by greed and the CIA so many times. Now isolationist voices have gained power domestically. We could have been the super heroes for freedom and democracy that the world needed. Being viewed that way was a big part of our super power's soft power and our loss of it is a big win for China and Russia.
Soft power and American exceptionalism; like apple pie with ice cream, always somehow greater than the sum of the parts. The reality is that our soft power is moderated (mediated?) by the narratives exported by the couple of big media companies that dominate our airwaves (and thoughts.) These narratives have intentionally not, worked to undermine American soft power while promoting the soft power of international organizations like the WHO. Any discussion of soft power that omits the media is hopelessly incomplete. The soft power is being reallocated by our elites, because it was their power to begin with.
We created the WHO and the UN out of an idealism and optimism that derived from an honest belief after WWII that we were the good guys that were going to use our power to spread freedom and democracy. That idealism is what gave us the power. That's why so many popular struggles around the world have used the statue of liberty as a symbol for the society they want to create.
The USA did exactly this themselves. they forced landed Bolivia's presidential airplane in Austria thinking Snowden is on board. Also, the USA is hunting down the likes of Snowden and Assange. So Belarus is following the lead
> Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships
Please show me examples in Poland or Hungary of opposition voices being silenced or arrested.
The worst that has happened is withdrawing government financing or grants to entities that aren’t pro government. That’s not exactly a dictatorship.
In Hungary almost all the online press is anti government. No one gets arrested. Their are 5 opposition parties now uniting against government, no one is silenced.
Yes the state TV is pro government. But this is not unique to Poland or Hungary. In fact I’d argue the pinnacle of state TV, the BBC is very much leaning to one side of the political isle right now too.
The EU has shown no determination to put a brake on Lukashenko's abuses and has been completely passive so far on the matter.
The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies will not be tolerated. Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships, and letting Belarus get away with this international provocation will just make it even more clear that the great powers don't care enough to defend democratic rights anywhere outside their own borders, and they are free to go ahead with their own crackdowns on freedom of expression and disregard of human rights.
[1] https://emerging-europe.com/news/belarus-shuts-down-largest-...